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Friday, June 9, 2017

Things I Do When I'm Not Running

After a half marathon (or any race longer than this), I typically take a full week off from running. Usually I do this because I'm broken and can hardly walk, because I've messed up something royally during the race (typically my knee/IT band/hip area). For the past year, I've been pretty shocked at how great I feel after races (San Antonio not withstanding, I felt terrible after that race for a full week. Major humidity=major dehydration=looooong recovery).

Surprisingly, after Brookings my legs were immediately tight but not broken. Sunday I looked at my recovery plan in my Pfitz book, and drew up a little mini plan. Yeah, remember when I said I'd be going plan-less for a couple of months? Apparently I lied!

I thought I'd run Tuesday or Wednesday, and ended up waiting until Wednesday. And it sucked. Well the run itself was fine, but my knee alerted me that it was not fully healed from the race.

So I rested.

AND WENT STIR CRAZY.

That Wednesday pre-run, I had myself convinced I was going to run a marathon in less than a month.

Since the knee pain, I have looked at marathons in January 2018, as well as March and April 2018. Do I want to run 20 miles through our winter? No. What am I thinking?!?

I've been looking at running calculators to see what they think I can run a marathon in to further fuel my desire to sign up for one. Is it sub 4? No. Am I trying to build up speed so that is the obvious race goal. YES.

Stick to the plan Jerbear.

Finally I've talked myself off the ledge (I think) by focusing on this summer's races. Plotting out some goals for the June 5k series, some pace goals for a couple of 10ks I'd like to do. Reminding myself that I'll be putting in lots more miles this summer, in a good amount of heat (yay heat training!) before my big goal races. That's the crappy part of a too hot summer, is that I have 6 months until my next goal race, which feels like FOREVER (4.5 months if I get in to the TC 10 Mile). OH! And I looked up my ten mile PR thinking maybe I could run a PR in October if I get in. 8:23 pace?! Are you freakin' kidding me?! There's no way. I'm so annoyed at how much speedier I used to be. Good god.